Conveyor systems have a wide use in manufacturing applications and are oftentimes used in moving and assembling items such as circuit boards used in electrical and electronic systems. In general a conveyor system used in the assembly of circuit boards has a pair of parallel rails each having a moving carrier with attached finger members that move the circuit boards along the conveyor system from one assembly operation to another. For example, a blank circuit board may be loaded onto the moving carrier finger members of the conveyor system. As the blank circuit board moves along the conveyor system, holes may be drilled into the circuit board at one assembly operation so that components comprising a part of the circuit board electrical circuit may be mounted onto the circuit board.
In subsequent assembly operations, components such as capacitors, resistors, coils, microprocessors and the like are inserted into holes of the circuit board during various assembly operations. The conveyor system may then move the component populated circuit board into a wave soldering assembly operation wherein the moving carrier finger members position the circuit board for soldering the components to printed wiring circuitry of the circuit board. After the wave soldering assembly operation, the conveyor system may move the soldered circuit board into yet another assembly operation to cleanse soldering and other types of debris from the assembled circuit board.
A problem arises in the use of conveyor systems in that the rails may go out of alignment causing the finger members to drop or warp the circuit boards thereby resulting in extensive damages. When such problems arise in the operation of a conveyor system, the conveyor system must be shut down until the misaligned section can be located and realigned. This requires that a maintenance person physically move along the conveyor system measuring the distance between the rails of the conveyor system to locate the misaligned section.
Accordingly, a need exists for gage apparatus to measure the alignment of conveyor systems. A need also exists for gage apparatus to continuously measure the alignment of conveyor system rails as the gage moves along the conveyor system.